Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) is right up there with Halloween as one of the most influential horror films of all time, and like Carpenter's masterwork, it spawned a slew of inferior sequels. Sure, some of the follow-ups do have their defenders, but most would agree that none of them ever came close to matching the sustained terror of the original.
The latest attempt to revive the franchise - imaginatively titled Texas Chainsaw Massacre - is set to hit Netflix this weekend, and while it features some surprisingly brutal kills, it does very little to distinguish itself from the rest of the contrived, disposable horror content that so often plagues the genre.
TCM 2022 serves as a(nother) direct sequel to the '74 movie, and focuses on a bunch of young entrepreneurs travelling to the town of Harlow, Texas with a view to renovating the location and turning it into a hipster hotspot. When one of them (you won't remember any of their names either, trust me) spots a confederate flag flying on a building, they kick up a fuss and get the tenant who's been living there forcibly removed. Unfortunately, the elderly woman dies on her way to the hospital. Even more unfortunately for our interchangeable protagonists, her "son" is everyone's favorite power-tool wielding maniac with a penchant for fashioning masks from his victims' faces.
It's not really made clear if Leatherface is supposed to have been living in quiet anonymity since the events of the first movie or if he occasionally tip-toed out at night with his chainsaw when the mood took him, but either way, the death of his only companion reignites those old compulsions, and he goes on a murderous rampage. Seriously, things get bloody.
One thing this movie cannot be accused of is watering down the violence. In fact, it might be the most gruesome instalment in the franchise to date. Decapitations, disembowelments, eviscerations... you name it, it's probably inflicted on someone. There are some pretty gnarly and inventive slayings on the menu, and one scene that plays out on a bus full of camera-phone brandishing teens is almost worth watching for alone. Almost.
Alas, that's where the positives end. Director David Blue Garcia makes zero effort to bring anything new to the abattoir here, and almost seems to embrace the sheer banality of the script. I realize nobody watches a TCM movie expecting a riveting yarn with well-developed characters, but is it too much to ask for even a semblance of an engaging story? One likeable hero we can root for? The sole survivor of the first film, Sally Hardesty (this time played by Olwen Fouéré), actually returns to face-down her nemesis and is completely wasted in what amounts to little more than a cameo. Wouldn't it have made more sense to have her as the main focus instead of the profoundly irritating bunch we're forced to spend time with?
To be fair, the movie doesn't take itself entirely seriously (if you squint, you might even catch an attempt at satire/social commentary), and one could argue that the entire set-up asks us to actively root for the mass murdering lunatic, anyway. This doesn't make for compelling viewing, though. As entertaining as it is to watch Leatherface do his thing for a while, when there's no real suspense or tension to be mined from any of the carnage on display, things begin to get very tedious very quickly, and by the time Garcia replicates the iconic finale shot of Hooper's classic, you might find yourself wondering how anyone involved thought this was a good idea.
Gorehounds will get their money's worth, but it's difficult to recommend Texas Chainsaw Massacre to anyone looking for a little more meat on the bone. Not the worst movie in the franchise (2013's Texas Chainsaw exists), but it might well be the most uninspired.